Family Friendly Entertainer
My clients Georgie and Tom are avid entertainers but it just wasn’t easy working in a kitchen well past its use by date. The kitchen clearly needed a new lease on life and Georgie was keen to add a lot more storage.
The positives about the existing space were the high ceilings and fantastic natural light flooding in through the large cedar windows. We definitely wanted to capitalize on the light and also the view of the beautiful garden.
What we did:
After the demo and strip out we pulled up the dated faux terracotta tiles and installed gorgeous washed French oak boards throughout the kitchen living areas.
We reconfigured the internal walls between an existing family bathroom and kitchen to gain an extra 50cm, this gave us just enough space to build a long butlers panty on the internal wall of the kitchen.
In the main kitchen area we reconfigured the layout to include a large L-shaped base kitchen with overhead cabinets along one side with space for a dream double wall oven and french door fridge to one end.
The large freestanding island bench was designed to be the hub of the home regularly hosting friends for casual lunches and drinks.
We introduced an additional bi-fold window to the North just above bench height to take full advantage of the outdoor entertaining area.
We painted the tired looking but solid cedar feature window, replaced the hardware and clad the sill in the same material as the bench top. The sill now serves as a display shelf allowing the work surface to be kept clutter free.
Remember those high ceilings… We decided to create a custom wall niche to break up the space and add some interest with Georgie and Tom's much loved collectables.
Finishes:
It didn’t take much for Georgie and Tom to move away from their initial colour choice of white. A couple of sample pots and they fell in love with the dark grey navy, which is perfectly set off by the French oak floor.
Floor – Porters French Oak in Calais
Joinery – Polyurethane in DULUX Grid
Bench Top - 40mm Corian Solid Surface in Cirrus
Lighting – French Industrial pendant lights from The Naked House
Splash Back – Mirror glass in silver grey
Ideas to steal:
The natural light in this kitchen was a big design plus. If you're not so lucky look for ways to increase light by introducing mirrored splash backs, LED strip lighting under wall cabinets and of course you can't go wrong with a big Skylight.
A Butlers pantry might be considered a luxury by many but in fact they can be an effective way to add more kitchen for less. The finishes generally don’t need to be as high end as the rest of the joinery helping to keep costs down.
